Spencer Wareham is brewing his first commercial batch of Kilannan beer.
About 1,200 litres is in the fermentation tank now and should be ready to drink in about two weeks. It will be available soon for sale at the 22-year-old brewmaster’s Kilannan Brewing Company at Rockford, in plain silver cans, for now.
Since the entrepreneur launched his business in March and applied for federal and provincial licensing, it’s been a long wait for this first batch of beer.
The lone employee, for now, is in charge of brewing, quality control, packaging, sales, promotion, accounting and anything else.
“I’m everybody. I squeegee the floor and clean the windows. Do it all,” Wareham said at the brewery recently.
In the months waiting for licence approvals, Wareham also designed and installed much of the brew house equipment. It includes a tank to soften groundwater, an area for research and development, with three 20-gallon brewing vats, a hot mix area with a tank to add malted barley and hot water to start the process, converting starch in the barley to sugars. Three of those tanks fill a fermentation tank, where yeast is added to start turning the liquid known as wort into the recreational beverage. Hops are also added for flavour and individual characteristics.
For now, Wareham has two 1,500-litre capacity fermentation tanks and equipment to filter the product, carbonate the beverage and put it in cans.
The first and flagship beer will be a German-style altbier, an ale with lager-like characteristics, brewed with imported German malts, hops and yeast.
It may take a few batches to settle the equipment and switch to the correct yeast, so the first product may differ slightly from what Wareham will eventually produce.
“I’m really big on consistency,” he said.
Labels with the new name – changed from his original Georgian Brewing Company to honour his family’s farm property name – are still in the works.
Beer interest all started for the Annan area resident at age 18, when he began brewing as a hobby. With an interest in science and engineering, he took to the process.
“I just really got into it. I liked every aspect of it,” he said.
So after high school, he abandoned plans to study commerce at university. Instead, he studied brewing in Chicago and Germany, earning a diploma in brewing technology.
He attended the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, the oldest brewing school in the U.S, and Munich’s Doemens Academy.
Back home last spring, while looking into relatively scarce jobs as a brewer, he discovered the premises in the Rockford Plaza. Within days he had a business plan and a “substantial” bank loan.
“Nothing brewing related comes cheap,” he said, surveying the gleaming, stainless steel vats and tanks. “Every home brewer kind of dreams of owning a brewery one day if they’re really into it,” he said. “This seemed like the perfect spot.”
His federal licence came through a week ago last Friday and provincial approvals soon followed. After some final equipment adjustments, he started brewing last Friday.
With things up and running, “one of the hard parts is over.”
The next step, with product in hand, is to finalize arrangements with interested restaurant owners and other vendors, in addition to direct sales from the brewery, by the can.
“I couldn’t brew without the licence, so I’ve been waiting to have the actual sample product to take around door to door. People are interested. I don’t foresee any problem.”
Eventually, Wareham said he will add staff, more tanks, additional products and when the time is right, if business grows according to plan, he may expand and relocate the Kilannan Brewing Company to Kilannan Farm.